Ranil Wickremesinghe: The Rajapaksas’ Puppet on a String

Hopes that a new president would usher in a measure of calm to restive Sri Lanka seem to have been dashed, with parliamentarians electing Ranil Wickremesinghe as the country’s eighth president in late July.

Although Wickremesinghe is not a member of the ruling Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP), the party of the discredited Rajapaksa family, he is widely seen to be a part of the old, corrupt political order, and worse, a Rajapaksa ally. As Sri Lanka’s president he is seen to be a stand-in, someone who will mind the shop until a Rajapaksa returns to the presidency again.

Within hours of Wickremesinghe’s election as president on July 20, protests erupted again outside the president’s office in Colombo. These can be expected to intensify in the coming weeks and months.

Only a week earlier, protesters were celebrating the exit of President Gotabaya Rajapaksa. They believed they had scored a major victory, having driven him out of the presidency and power, even off the island.

Sri Lanka has been in the grip of a crippling foreign exchange crisis that has resulted in a shortage of food, fuel, and medicines in the country. Since March, tens of thousands of protesters have converged at Colombo’s Galle Face Green. Their main demand was the resignation of Gotabaya and others of the Rajapaksa clan, who held key posts in the government.

Over the months the Rajapaksas, including then-Prime Minister Mahinda, a former two-time president and Gotabaya’s brother, were forced to resign. But Gotabaya hung on to power. That changed when protesters stormed his office and residence on July 9.

Given how much power is vested in the presidency by the Sri Lankan Constitution, ousting Gotabaya was near impossible. That they were able to boot him out was a credit to the protesters. Understandably, they celebrated his exit as their victory.

However, the Rajapaksas appear to have risen from the ashes and are back to playing the part of puppet-master.

Support from the Rajapaksas’ SLPP propelled Wickremesinghe to the presidency; he secured 134 votes in the election compared to 82 votes for his nearest rival, Dullas Alahapperuma, an SLPP dissident. Rajapaksa backing secured the presidency for Wickremesinghe. Sri Lanka’s new president begins his stint at the helm beholden to the Rajapaksas.

Wickremesinghe is an unpopular leader and has no mass support. His United National Party was wiped out in the 2020 election. In the present circumstances, Wickremesinghe will have little autonomy.

That the Rajapaksas are back in the saddle, albeit indirectly, was underscored even as the voting was in progress. Other than Gotabaya, who is cooling his heels in Singapore, the clan was out in full force in Parliament during the election, nodding and smiling at other MPs. Wickremesinghe’s victory indicates that the Rajapaksas’ grip over the party and their parliamentarians, and the presidency, remains unchallenged.

With the support of the Rajapaksas, Wickremesinghe has achieved his long-standing ambition to become president. But he is likely to find that all he has inherited is a crown of thorns.

Gotabaya has left behind a bankrupt Sri Lanka. Can Wickremesinghe pull the country out of the mess? He is known to be close to Western countries and India. These connections will help him with accessing funding from foreign governments and the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

Indeed, since he became prime minister in May, Sri Lanka has engaged in negotiations with the IMF, which are reportedly nearing conclusion. While funds are likely on their way, whether this will work to Sri Lanka’s benefit in the long run is debatable.

Sri Lanka has a history of not negotiating smartly with foreign banks and governments. Political analysts note that Sri Lankan officials don’t negotiate terms with lenders; rather they negotiate the amount of the loan and accept the conditions imposed on the country.

Commitment to ensuring fiscal discipline is an important aspect of IMF loans. Sri Lanka will be expected to introduce austerity measures, cut back government subsidies, increase value-added tax rates, devalue the currency, and privatize some state-owned enterprises.

These changes could hit the Sri Lankan middle class and poor hard. These sections are already struggling with spiraling prices of essential commodities and cuts to fuel and food subsidies will deepen their suffering. This will encourage further unrest.

It is therefore imperative that Wickremesinghe ensures that his negotiating team bargains hard with the IMF. This may not be easy given how weak Sri Lanka’s bargaining position is.

Wickremesinghe is in a difficult situation. He needs IMF funds to begin flowing immediately so that fuel and food can be quickly imported to ease public suffering and calm the public mood. Continuing unrest and protests could disrupt his plans as the IMF insists on stability. He will be tempted therefore to deploy the security forces to crush the protests.

There are worrying signs of what lies ahead. Soon after taking charge as interim president, Wickremesinghe imposed an emergency across the country and a curfew in Western Province, including the capital, Colombo. An emergency bestows exceptional powers on an already powerful presidency to make regulations overriding existing laws, which are often used to arrest critics and dissidents.

"We must end this fascist threat to democracy. We can't allow the destruction of state property. The President’s Office, the President’s Secretariat and the Prime Minister’s official residence must be returned to proper custody," Wickremesinghe said, while announcing the emergency. “We can’t let them tear up our constitution. We can't allow fascists to take over. Some mainstream politicians too seem to be supporting these extremists. That is why I declared a nation-wide emergency and a curfew," he added.

Wickremesinghe ordered the military and police “to do what is necessary to restore order.”

Sure enough, on July 22, Sri Lankan security forces violently cleared the main protest camp in Colombo in an overnight raid. “The use of the Armed Forces to suppress civilian protests on the very first day in office of the new President is despicable and will have serious consequences on our country’s social, economic and political stability,” the Bar Association of Sri Lanka said in a statement denouncing the action.

As interim president, Wickremesinghe announced that he had made the decision to order the houses of SLPP parliamentarians that were burnt down by enraged protesters on July 9 to be rebuilt.

It is likely that funds for such generous gestures will come out of the public coffers. Wickremesinghe’s gesture, which comes at a time when Sri Lanka is bankrupt, has understandably angered ordinary Sri Lankans. Incidentally, Wickremesinghe has not shown such understanding or generosity toward the masses.